A good bee season ~ September 28, 2000

David Heiller

Bees are a small part of my life, but one that I like. They only sting when they are mad. They are like people in that way.

I have one hive of bees. That isn’t much, even though a hive can contain 80,000 bees. A few of them stung me on Sunday when I took half of their honey away. I couldn’t blame them.

I was late in taking the honey, as Nick Worobel pointed out on September 21. He was a master beekeeper in his day, first in Ukraine then in rural Bruno. Now he lives in the big city of Sandstone. When I told him I was going to take the honey on Sunday, a wistful look flickered across his face and he smiled.

“Make sure you feed the bees when you are done,” he said, after reminding me that I was about a month late in my job. “Mix half sugar and half water and set it on top of hive. They like that.”

Good old Nick will be giving bee advice on his deathbed, which hopefully will be many years away.

One of David's beekeeping chores. This is a 
spring job getting the hive ready for the bees.

I knew I was late in my job. Other things had taken priority. “Life got in the way,” as they say. So I was happy that Sunday was warm and sunny and I could put on the bee suit and take the honey.

I smoked the hive first, using a smoker that was filled with smoldering twine. Smoke confuses the bees and sends them retreating into the hive, according to the bee book. Of course, the bees have never read the book. Rather than retreat, some of them seemed to charge.

But I had my bee suit on, so their angry buzzing didn’t bother me. I’d be angry too if someone was stealing my summer wages.

I pulled off the cover and lifted out a frame, using a frame grabbing tool. I brushed bees off the frame using a soft brush. Bee keepers have a lot of special tools. I set the frame in a box in a cart, and did the same to another frame, and another, until I had taken two boxes of frames, about 18 in all. The bees had filled four boxes of frames. I left another 18 frames for the bees to eat over the winter. Sorry bees, but that’s what the book says.

Full beekeeping regalia.

I pushed the cart to the sauna, which doubles as my bee processing room. I put the frames in there. A fire crackled in the stove. In a short while the frames were warm. That made the honey softer and easier to extract.

I took two frames and cut the wax off, using a heated knife (another special honey tool). The wax, which was full of honey too, went into a metal bowl. Then I set the frames in an extractor, which looks like a huge tin can with a handle. I turned the handle as fast as I could for about half a minute, which spun the frames inside. Then I opened the extractor, reversed the frames, and did it again. Centrifugal force extracted the honey from the combs and into the can.

I repeated this step until about half the frames had been extracted. Then I put an ice cream bucket under the spigot at the bottom of the extractor and watched honey pour out. There’s nothing as pretty as watching that first batch of honey ooze out of the spigot. It looked like golden crude oil.

The sauna had a lot of bees in it by then, and more were arriving by the minute. Word had spread that their honey supply had moved to the sauna. I didn’t have my bee suit on anymore, and bees were crawling on my arms and face and hair. One was inching up the inside of my pants leg. That one was a bit distracting. But the rest didn’t bother me. A few stung, but that’s nothing to an old garlic eater like me. Most of them were too busy trying to gather up their honey and take it back to the hive. They were done being angry, and had returned to work.

I de-capped and extracted the rest of the frames. I carried the pans and extractor to the hive. There was still some honey on it. The bees will find it and clean it up. Then I’ll wash it and put it away. I’ll follow Nick’s advice and feed the bees some sugar water, and hope they make it through the winter.

I ended up with four buckets of honey, plus another two buckets of cappings. That’s good for me. All of this will be strained through cheese-cloth and put in jars. I’ll give some away, some I will barter, but most of it will go on peanut butter sandwiches and into cups of tea. It should last for a year. Then this fun fall job will be repeated.